Monthly Archives: August 2016

A decade plus study of the digital evolution of the pathfinder affirms to the authors that in general terms primary – or what others know as elementary or preparatory – schools will evolve faster than their secondary/high school counterparts.

The current primary school mindset, culture and organisational mode makes digital evolution appreciably easier than in the secondary school where the strong subject and exam focus, silo like organisational configuration, semi – autonomous ‘power blocs’ and size makes ready transformation difficult.

Critically the pointers are indicating the difference will grow.

We are already seeing primary school graduates moving from a higher order digitally based mode of teaching, where the children naturally use their own digital kit, to a lower order mode of teaching in the high school where the use of the student’s technology is still banned.

Not surprisingly the students and their parents are frustrated and invariably they are looking for those high schools where the disconnection is least.

It is a development that has very real student enrolment implications for the high schools.

However on present indications it is a development that most high schools could struggle to redress in the near future.

While not for a moment seeking to defend those high schools wedded to the paper based world the strong suggestion is that

the different rate of evolution between the primary and secondary schools be better understood, by both primary and secondary educators, and the parents and students informed of some of the main impediments potentially impacting the high school

the evolution of the two sectors of schooling be viewed separately and while understanding that both will ultimately move along the same evolutionary path and move through the same evolutionary stages the high school evolution will in general terms be slower.

In making the latter observation it must be stressed that one is talking in general terms, knowing full well there are secondary schools years ahead in their evolution than some barely moving primary schools.

It should also be underscored that the primary – high school difference is also likely to be evidenced within K-12 schools, albeit possibly slightly later if the school has adopted a middle school model.

Related is the importance of high schools comparing their evolutionary journey with that of like high schools and most assuredly not the typical primary school. One needs compare oranges with oranges.

The now clear and challenging reality, as yet few are seeing, is that the primary schools in general will evolve at an ever greater rate, in so doing increasingly adopt a digitally based, ever higher mode of schooling apposite for a socially networked world, very often moving their graduates into a more dated educational experience.

In bears reflecting why this might so.

The traditional form, size, focus, culture, mindset, teaching of the primary school, coupled with the greater collaboration between the school and the home makes is that easier for astute primary school principals to orchestrate their school’s on-going evolution than their high school counterparts.

Size and the relative smallness of most primary schools, and in turn the significantly fewer staff makes it that much more manageable to shape the desired ever evolving, evermore integrated, complex and higher order school ecosystem.

Primary schools have for decades had as a focus the learner and the desired holistic learning of all children, and when coupled with their use of an organisational structure with set classes or class groupings that emphasis provides a ready platform upon which to enhance all the staff’s macro understanding of the school’s workings and to collaborate evermore closely with the children’s homes.

Rarely does the primary school have the largely autonomous, subject based faculties or ‘empires’ found in the high school where middle managers are often reluctant to cede their power or vary their micro focus.

Rather the focus of all staff, the principal, the executive, the teachers and the professional support is a quality holistic education for every child. That focus, that thinking is relatively easy to build upon as the school begins lowering its walls, seeks to take advantage of the educational opportunities of the networked world, begins collaborating with its homes and community, and marrying the in and out of school learning and teaching.

Where genuine collaboration between the school and the home in the secondary years has invariably been minimal there is scarcely a primary school where the early childhood teachers have not worked closely with the parents. Once again that is a base that can be readily built upon and extended across all the primary school. In contrast most high schools have rarely collaborated with their homes, they unilaterally controlling the in school teaching and learning and as such in moving to a digital operational base and recognising the very considerable value of collaboration are basically having to start from scratch.

Importantly, except in the likes of England, most primary schools across the developed world have not had to contend with the stultifying external paper based exams that markedly impact the workings and thinking of the upper secondary school.

In brief it has been, and continues to be that much easier for the primary schools to move to a digital operational base, to build upon the opportunities availed, to ready their total staff and the wider school community for the on-going evolutionary journey and to evolve at accelerating pace.

The digital transformation research underscores the critical importance of organisations continually meeting and astutely building upon the client’s ever rising, increasingly higher order digital expectations.

‘The customer experience is at the heart of digital transformation (Forrester, 2015)’.

The Economist concludes:

Evolving customer expectations are the most common driver of digital transformation (Economist, 2015, p2).

The same imperative will increasingly hold with the school, and its ability to continually meet and accommodate its current and prospective client’s rapidly rising digital expectations.

In a digital and networked society where the young and their parents have normalised the use of the digital to the extent that its has become virtually invisible the expectation is that they will naturally use their current technology in every facet of their lives and work. Indeed we are shocked when we can’t and are scornful of those enterprises that don’t provide fast, ready and sophisticated online access.

We are living in a society for whom the increasingly sophisticated use of the digital has become the norm and which no longer differentiates between face- to-face and online experiences (Westerman, et al, 2014).

The early adopter, pathfinder schools globally have long recognised this reality, have normalised the use of the digital in every facet of their teaching and administration, are providing an integrated digital client experience and vitally have positioned their schools to evolve at a pace where they can continually accommodate their client’s rising digital expectations.

Schools can only do that, and meet the client’s rising digital expectations – known and unanticipated – if they too have normalised the use of the digital.

School can’t hope to meet, let alone build upon the school their client’s rising digital expectations unless they, like their client’s have normalised the whole school use of the digital.

Client’s expectations

With digital normalisation the clients in general terms naturally – and largely unwittingly – expect the school to mirror the evolving digital practises of society. There is for example the expectation, particularly among the students and younger parents, that:

the children will use the current digital technologies they already use 24/7/365

Net access and bandwidth in the school will be on par with that in the home

the digital will be used naturally in all teaching and learning, from Kindergarten upwards

students and parents can email their teachers

students can use their smartphone to photo board notes

the school website will provide all the latest information

the school will have an effective integrated digital communications suite, like all other organisations

the school’s use of the digital technology will evolve, becoming increasingly sophisticated, while always readying the young to use it astutely.

There is also the expectation the school’s teaching will build upon the young’s normalised 24/7/365 use of the digital technology, recognising the nature of the learning and teaching they do outside the school walls and will adjust and individualise their teaching accordingly.

Possibly largely unwittingly they also expect the curriculum to employ and enhance current, but also rapidly evolving, technological practices, and not be constrained by a dated formal digital technology curriculum that teaches digitally aware clients the ways of the past.

In saying ‘possibly’ and ‘unwittingly’ the reality is that the client’s digital expectations will continually grow and change, and will be impacted by their local school setting. Four years ago apps were largely unheard of: today they are an integral part of modern society. Schools that have normalised the use of the digital and are striving to meet their clients digital needs will engender in the school itself and likely ‘competing’ local schools appreciably higher digital expectations than those found in a traditional paper based school.

To what extend does your school meet the above expectations? How far has it yet to travel?

As a quick test envision yourself as a client, jot down your digital expectations and compare them to your school’s practises.

Building upon the client’s expectations

One of the new arts to be conquered by leaders of digital schools is the reading and continual building upon of the clients’ digital expectations.

The continued viability of a school will increasingly be tied to its ability to meet those expectations (Lee, 2015).

That challenge is made that much more difficult by the pace and uncertain nature of the digital revolution and the school’s requirement to identify and address the current digital expectations, those of the near future and critically those as yet unidentified.

In identifying the attributes required by the students in a digital and networked world while schools cannot foretell of the future digital tools that will be used they can and should have an ecosystem agile enough to readily accommodate the emerging technology and changing practises.

Forrester (2015). Digital Transformation in the Age of the Customer. Forrester for Accenture. October 2015 – https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/Accenture/Conversion-Assets/DotCom/Documents/Global/PDF/Digital_1/Accenture-Digital-Transformation-B2B-spotlight.pdf

You will want the school eventually to use the digital as naturally as it is outside the school walls today, it being so normal as to be near invisible.

You’ll want it to naturally underpin every school operation, teaching and administrative.

Only then will the total school community be in the position where it can truly begin harnessing the immense and increasing power of the digital technology and the school ecosystem and continually provide each child the desired education.

That said whole school digital normalisation is very difficult to achieve.

It is the reason why so few schools globally have reached that evolutionary stage. It requires in most schools a fundamental change in thinking, the creation of a highly supportive and empowering culture and the adoption of a mode of schooling befitting a digital and socially networked society. It requires a principal, a leadership team, a staff and a community that is prepared to dream, to take risks and to put in the years of concerted effort required to successfully address the myriad of human and technological variables needed to create the desired ecology.

It is the sixth of the school evolutionary stages for a very good reason.

With digital normalisation the school reaches the stage where it has finally shed its paper based shackles – its mindset, technological base, preoccupation with the physical site and its ‘within the walls’ teaching and practises – and is operating as a digital and socially networked school community thriving on seeming chaos, change and evolution.

When all within the school’s community have in their hands their personal digital technologies and are trusted and empowered to use their digital toolkit the school has reached the position where the doors are opened for it to take advantage of the evermore powerful and sophisticated digital base and thinking in the 24/7/365 schooling of the young.

An important point of clarification needs to be made. Digital normalisation occurs when the use of the digital technology across all facets of the school operations is so natural, so accepted as to be near invisible. It is not merely about issuing everyone with an iPad or a Chromebook, but rather is the stage when everyone is trusted to use their own kit and the focus is on the desired learning rather than the technology.

We are, in using the term most assuredly not implying that schools should only use digital technologies, or use the digital in all teaching but rather are suggesting the technology be used normally, appropriately and in a balanced manner – like we all use it in our everyday lives. Let the teaching situation determine what is the apt instructional technology or indeed increasingly mix of instructional technologies for each child.

A significant part of your digital evolutionary journey will be the school’s historic movement from its inefficient silo like organisational structure of Industrial Age origins to an increasingly integrated, efficient and productive one befitting a digital and socially networked society.

You’ll shift from the traditional arrangement where the various cells within the school – the classroom teacher, the faculty, the ICT unit, the library, the front office – operate largely autonomously to a significantly more integrated structure where all operations are interconnected and focussed on realising the school’s shaping vision.

A major – and again largely unwitting – driver of the shift will be the school’s move to a digital operational base and the recognition of the many benefits that flow from convergence and organisational integration. Digital congruence is the key. The physical networking of the school and the ubiquitous use of all manner of digital technologies that can talk to each other make redundant many practises and quickly remove the strict divisions between the operational units.

The vast majority of the world’s schools, and in particular the secondary are still impacted by the factory model with its strong division of labour and the assumption that if each unit on the production line does its job the students would graduate with an appropriate holistic education.

Many over the last fifty years have questioned that assumption and some schools have made major strides in adopting organisational structures that open the way for a more holistic education.

Until relatively recently the major impediment to the running of a more integrated school has been its underlying paper base. Paper as a technology has major limitations, the most important of which is the requirement that the information thereon has to be physically transported to its recipient/s. The high level use of that technology necessitated close physical proximity. The delivery of a paper to another member of staff meant getting up and physically delivering the information.

While philosophically and organisationally the school might have wanted to integrate its efforts while ever it retained its paper operational base its efforts would be frustrated.

Networks and the digital technology change the game. Not only does the digital operational base negate the physical and logistical shortcomings, stimulate operational integration but it also allows full multimedia creation, 24/7/365 communication, interaction and storage – all at pace and with little cost. Few have yet to sit back and analyse the impact alone of the physical networking of schools in that 90’s and early 2000’s.

The experience of the pathfinder schools would suggest the shift from the loosely to more tightly coupled school will be gradual, incremental and will accelerate the more the school matures its ecosystem.

That acceleration will be assisted by the school’s:

tightening focus on its shaping educational vision

efforts to ensure all school operations are directed to realising that vision

rising digital expectations

recognition that digital congruence is the crux

trust and empowerment of its staff and community, and efforts to ensure all have a better macro understanding of the school’s workings

endeavours to shape an increasingly mature and powerful school ecosystem

daily efforts to create an evermore productive ecosystem, that marries the in and out of school learning and resourcing

Experience has demonstrated that the integration will in general terms occur much faster in the primary or elementary school than in the high schools. The structural hurdles and cultural mores of the high school are far harder to overcome than those in the primary school.

In the secondary school in addition to the challenge of changing the culture, and shifting the focus away from paper based external exams there is the invariable silo like organizational structure and the fiefdoms and their warlords keen to retain their power base.

In brief if you are leading a secondary school on its evolutionary journey be prepared for a long and at times painful graduated shift.

The bottom line in a market driven economy is that every school – state and independent – has to attract and retain sufficient clients to remain viable.

The new and added challenge for schools – that business is already grappling with – is how to win the continued patronage of the client’s year after year, student cohort after cohort in a world of rapid change and evolution? As Nokia, Blackberry and Yahoo can attest client support in the digital world can be momentary. What are perceived as exemplar schools today within years could suffer the same fate as Nokia if they don’t continue to attract the clients.

Both are realities that many schools don’t appear to recognise or to factor into their planning. You should in readying your digital evolutionary journey.

Compounding the challenge many of the same principals and teachers appear loath to view the students and their parents as clients, seeing them simply as ‘conscripts’ obliged by law to attend the school, fortunate to have access to their professional expertise.

That belief is particularly apparent in schools at the lower school evolutionary stages (Lee and Broadie, 2016). At that stage the leadership and indeed most of the teachers are firmly of the belief that the educational experts should unilaterally control all aspects of the schooling. The students and parents should be acquiescent and accept the control given by government to the experts.

The expectation of those schools is that the students and the parents accept the established ways and will, without question attend the local school.

That might have been acceptable to students and parents in the past. It might even be acceptable in some situations today where there is no alternative to the traditional mode of schooling but it is increasingly less tenable where there are good digital schools ‘competing’ for the student custom.

The stark reality in a market driven democracy is that if parents want to get their children into the desired state school – and they are willing to play the political game – they will invariably succeed.

In 2016 the clients, the customers expect the market – and not the government – to govern their choice. Moreover they expect organisations will not only meet, but hopefully will exceed their needs and wants. As soon as another organisation is perceived to do that better they will likely take their custom to the superior provider.

The same is on trend to become increasingly a feature of schooling, with the marketplace determining the winners (Lee and Broadie, 2016…).

Forrester’s in its research on digital transformation of organisations concluded:

The customer experience is at the heart of digital transformation. With customers in the driver’s seat of their interactions with brands, businesses must create positive and relevant customer experiences across channels and touch points. As a result, digital development and customer experience improvement are two key priorities for businesses (Forrester, 2015, p1)

The same holds true for schools.

We would urge all embarking on the digital evolutionary journey to treat your current and prospective students and parents very much as your clients. View them as clients who could take their custom elsewhere if they perceive their needs are not being meet. Follow the lead of the digital schools and indeed the digital masters in business and the public sector and focus first and foremost on the clients and recognise the increasingly tenuous hold you have on their patronage.

Putting their needs to the fore, listening to them, communicating with them through multiple channels, striving to continually improve the schooling, positioning the learner at the centre of the teaching and doing the utmost to ensure each child continually receives the appropriate schooling 24/7/365 in a rapidly world will go a long way to towards changing the focus and nature of the schooling and ensuring the school’s continued viability.

While many have advocated since the 80’s that schools should better meet their client’s needs most have not done so until they moved to a digital operational base, began lowering the school walls and recognised the considerable value of genuine collaboration with their current and prospective clients.

The challenge of identifying your client’s needs in the midst of the Digital Revolution is considerable. But the case study digital school experience strongly suggests that if the school trusts, respects and empowers its clients and works collaboratively them in their identification they will be satisfied and will work with the school in helping identify and meet the rising expectations.

That said as an educational leader within a rapidly evolving world you, like the leaders in industry will be expected to identify the client’s needs well before the clients recognise that need. The genius of a Steve Jobs was his ability to read as yet unarticulated customer needs. That will increasingly be desired of school leaders as they seek to identify the kind of attributes desired of the young twenty, thirty years hence.

That critical task is made that much easier if the school is focussed its clients and winning them for the long haul.

Forrester (2015). Digital Transformation in the Age of the Customer. Forrester for Accenture. October 2015 – https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/Accenture/Conversion-Assets/DotCom/Documents/Global/PDF/Digital_1/Accenture-Digital-Transformation-B2B-spotlight.pdf